Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Hey, that's my pig!

The tow truck driver made me think of a hard-living Santa Claus, the way he might dress on the other 364 days of the year, smoking a cheap, nauseating cigar. After he unhitched my car at the garage, I decided to check in at the motel down the road, a cheerless little place I could tell, even in the dark, hadn’t seen much recent business. Several dozen keys on identical chains hung from nails behind the front desk, where someone was sleeping slouched way down in a cushionless, wooden chair. I debated the best way to wake the teenager behind the reservations desk, when she woke on her own with a sudden start.

“Hey, that’s my pig!”

She seemed to wait for me to say something in response.

“Hi, I need a room. Just something basic. I’m alone.”

I’d cycled through the stations twice, giving the content on each channel no more than a few seconds to interest me. A car exploded, a man offered another man a cigarette, a woman smiled into a thousand rooms like mine, the lessons of Christ were preached, a vacuum was dragged across the carpet, I was told what to want, a gun was fired, the credits rolled past. I didn’t quite know what to make of this flickering screen of miscellaneous humanity, but couldn’t help from feeling a little disappointed as I turned it off. I cracked open another bottle of something from the minibar, allowed myself briefly to contemplate my own death, then read a few pages from FinnegansWake, chosen at random, to help me fall asleep.

About Me

Ideas turn me on.
Grant Koo is a novelist, short story writer, recovered poet, blogger, pop culture critic without thumbs, and Senior Managing Editor at WebMD—though only one of these provide him with any income to support his habits, which can range from the utterly mundane to the morally questionable. He lives with his wife and daughter in Jersey City, NJ.
Book 3, which completes the self-fulfilling trilogy, is now available.
LIFE'S WORK: BUT ANOTHER PIXEL IN LCD REALITY
A son discovers an unlikely literary inheritance while going through his dead father's things to decide on what to keep, what to donate, and what to throw away. In his somewhat untethered state, he attempts to complete one of his father's unfinished works, but when the son becomes an unexpected father himself, a spiritual wormhole opens up and threatens to swallow his whale of a story whole.
Pub date: Dec 2016
FRAMING THE STORY
Pub date: July 2015
AND THE PAST WENT ON BREATHING
Pub date: Sep 2012
#GrantKooLovesYouToo